IN RUZAEVKA*
MAY 31, 1918

It is impossible and impermissible to leave before Myasnikov's arrival and before all affairs are handed over.

At what time did you receive the latest information and from whom in Penza? How many thousands of Czechs are there and when did they leave for Samara? When Myasnikov arrives [send] bring him to the apparatus for a conversation with me. What is the guarantee of the accuracy of the information about the expedition?

Lenin.

The first note was transmitted to Ruzaevka on May 31 at 10:20 a.m. and again at 11:20 p.m.; the second on May 31 at 10:52 p.m. and again at 11:25 p.m. — Ed.

TWO NOTES BY DIRECT WIRE TO V. V. KURAYEV

Just received a telegram from Minkin with a request to provide him with a train for his arrival to make a report.

I insist on Minkin's trip to Penza, if the Czechs have left, to receive and verify the expedition.

Lenin

¹ A. F. Myasnikov — in spring 1918 was commander of the Volga Front and participated in operations against the Czechoslovaks.

² A. E. Minkin — initially deputy chairman of the provincial executive committee and chief of the expedition for the manufacture of banknotes; subsequently chairman of the Penza Provincial Executive Committee.

With the emergence of the Czechoslovak front (at 45 versts from Penza), the political situation in the province became sharply aggravated; a wave of kulak uprisings rolled across the province. In early August, the Party Central Committee sent E. Bosh to work in Penza.

In her article "Meetings and Conversations with Vladimir Ilyich," E. Bosh writes that Lenin, upon her departure for Penza, asked her to report to him immediately about the condition in which she would find the province. She characterizes as follows the situation in which the struggle against internal counterrevolution unfolded. "... The Socialist Revolutionaries, who had begun an armed struggle against the Council of People's Commissars, had thrown considerable forces here, which they scattered along the front zone and throughout the volosts with the aim of raising the peasantry... In this work the Socialist Revolutionaries were actively assisted by priests and officers of the old army; the latter succeeded, concealing their past, in securing positions in the land and food departments of the local Soviet, as traveling instructors for the realization of the harvest. There were very few Party (Communist) and Soviet workers in the province; Party organizations in the localities were only being formed; all our armed forces from the province had been transferred to the front, and the conditions for counterrevolutionary work were most favorable. The Socialist Revolutionaries first of all scattered the villages and hamlets with their proclamations, in which they disseminated the vilest provocational information" (*Proletarskaya Revolyutsiya* No. 3 [26] for 1924, p. 467). E. Bosh's report on the situation in the province served as the occasion for Lenin's first telegram.

LENIN COLLECTION